O R I G I N A L P A P E R

Maritime Cultural Landscapes, Maritimity and Quasi
Objects

David Berg Tuddenham

Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2010

Abstract

Does the concept of maritime cultural landscapes bridge a division between

land and sea, or does it maintain a gap that perhaps doesn’t even exist? This paper
discusses maritime and maritime cultural landscapes as phenomena in the light of Actor
Network Theory, where maritimity is given attention as a derivation of the modern
metaphysics as described by Bruno Latour. The paper makes use of a case study from
Norwegian Cultural Heritage Management (CHM), where land and sea archaeologists
meet each other in a joint venture project at the island of Smøla, Møre & Romsdal County.

Keywords

Maritime archaeology

Maritime cultural landscapes Maritimity

Actor network theory

Introduction

Christer Westerdahl asks in a recent article what is maritime? Is there anything exclusively
maritime? (

2008

:191). He points out that individuals as well as groups can be part of

several cultures at the same time. I believe it is obvious that, even if we deal with what we
suppose is a single culture, it is in itself at least two, taken as a combination of two or more
ways of subsistence (ibid). Something such as exclusively maritime will therefore be hard
to single out. Is there then any point defining maritime or coastal culture? Westerdahl
stresses the cultural values associated with the maritime world of the past, which we cannot
understand without a profound study of their roots;

Those of us who study maritime culture have always been told by the mainstream that

our field is marginal. That is only superficially true. The aim of the definitions is to
resurrect the relationship of man with the sea as one of the bases for explaining cultural
history in general. This is how essential the sea has been, whether humans have lived in
direct contact with it or only had it as a permanent reference point. The human per-
spective, after all, always consists of both sea and land

… The problem is, therefore, how to

D. B. Tuddenham (

&)

Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway
e-mail: [e-mail]

123

J Mari Arch
DOI 10.1007/s11457-010-9055-0

define the specifically maritime in relation to what is specifically land-oriented or, if you
like, terrestrial. This is not at all self evident. But those who have an interest in matters
maritime tend instinctively to treat subjects which may reveal essential things only in
relation to a strictly maritime life. Unfortunately this may mean that their scope is
excessively narrow (ibid).

I believe Westerdahl points to something quite essential. Anything exclusively maritime

is hard to define and is by no means self evident. Nevertheless that is in many senses the
scope of maritime archaeology by stressing the importance of maritime life and the human
relation to the sea and seafaring. Maritime and terrestrial becomes by definition categories
that need distinguishing

1

where maritime archaeology necessarily is concerned about the

human relationship to sea and seafaring. Its playground is the maritime cultural landscape.
Its opposition becomes by semantics terrestrial archaeology, which also can be referred to
as mainstream archaeology. Even though it is hard to define pure maritime, the very
existence of an archaeology belonging to the maritime depends on something that actually
can be termed maritime. If not, the sub discipline and its definition of its playground
become meaningless.

In this article, I want to discuss the idea of maritime cultural landscapes, which can be

said to be a dominant research area within North European maritime archaeology. As a
concept, it has been exceedingly successful, and the term has been widely adopted after its
introduction to archaeology in 1989 (Westerdahl

1989

). But even if one of its ideals is to

bridge the gap between maritime and terrestrial, as the quotation above refers to, there are
some paradoxes inherent with the term that I want to explore further. Does the maritime
cultural landscape as a concept bridge a division between land and sea, or does it maintain
a gap that perhaps doesn’t even exist?

Maritime Archaeology and its Landscapes: A Very Brief Research History

In many senses, the concept of Maritime Cultural Landscapes was a reaction against
particularism within archaeology under water, with its heavy focus on ship wrecks and ship
remains (Westerdahl

1986

:11). With the introduction of SCUBA equipment in the civilian

market after the Second World War, the activity on ancient ship wrecks more or less
‘‘exploded’’, with very different approaches toward sites. Fre´de´ric Dumas, a companion to
the better known French explorer Jacques-Yves Cousteau, made this comment on the
ongoing activity in the Mediterranean after the release of modern day diving equipment:

The forest of pines that borders the coast in the harbour provided shelter for the

multicoloured tents of a vast international camping ground, from which hordes of pink,
chubby little divers from Germany, Belgium and Switzerland set out in feverish pursuit of
nautical souvenirs. They where especially fond of archaeological items, and the wrecks in
the vicinity were the victims of regularly scheduled clandestine explorations (Dumas

1972

:72–73).

In this early phase, archaeology had to compete with treasure hunters, and most of the

archaeologically motivated expeditions could be regarded as merely rescue operations to
protect sites from looting. And its methodological base was poorly developed. Until the
excavations of the Yassi Ada and Cape Gelidonya ships in the early 1960s, under the
leadership of Bass (

1966

,

1967

), the methodological level was quite experimental and by

1

e.g. Jasinski (

1995a

) in his attempts to define different categories and levels of maritime archaeological

data.

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no means comparable with an excavation on shore. With the methodological breakthrough
represented by Yassi Ada and Cape Gelidonya, archaeology under water faced a new era,
where the methodological standards proved to be at the same levels as a site on shore.
Though, a division was created between terrestrial and marine (later maritime) archaeol-
ogy, where the latter was tended to be viewed as less serious than archaeology on shore
(Bass

1983

; McGrail

1984

; Carpenter

1991

; Jasinski

1993

,

1995b

,

1999

; Westerdahl

1986

,

2008

).

One early critique against archaeology under water was its lack of a theoretical foun-

dation, mainly occupied with particularistic investigations on shipwrecks. In 1978, Keith
Muckelroy published Maritime Archaeology, a prosessual approach toward the activity on
the sea floor. In the introductory, he states that another outstanding feature, as things stand
in the late 1970s, is a remarkable lack of development or systematisation, when compared
with most other archaeological sub-disciplines (1978:10). Later on in his publication, he
notes that without a corresponding level of generalisation, maritime archaeology would be
merely antiquarianism, a fascinating and relatively harmless leisure activity, but no
serious and rewarding academic discipline, demanding of considerable expertise,
sophisticated equipment, and support from public funds (ibid:226).

With Muckelroy’s processual contribution, the archaeological sub-discipline Maritime

Archaeology was born, giving for the first time a definition of the maritime research field
within archaeology (Jasinski

1995b

:108). Muckelroy’s definition of maritime archaeology

was the scientific study of the material remains of man and his activity on the sea (ibid:4).
The concept of maritime archaeology as a sub-discipline soon became a success (see also
Adams

2002

:228–230; Harpster

2009

:67–82), but the definition was quickly brought up for

discussion. One of the first observations made was the obvious fact that the definition
doesn’t take into account remains on shore or in lakes and rivers that can contribute to the
understanding of maritime life—which was commonly understood to be ships and ship-
board community (see McGrail

1984

; Adams

2002

:228). Another important critique came

from researchers who found the focus on ships and shipboard community as rather narrow,
with the proposal of maritime cultural landscapes as a tool to achieve a more holistic
approach within the discipline (Crumlin-Pedersen

1978

; Westerdahl

1986

,

1989

,

1992

). An

important question that led to the concept of the maritime cultural landscape was; what is
maritime culture? Where can we find traces of maritime culture? Ships and boats are an
obvious part of maritime culture, but they are only part of a larger cultural complex. And
the fact that most shipwrecks are deposited on the seafloor can not be of significant
importance for an academic discipline that aims to understand maritime ways of life. They
simply belong to a cultural landscape- a maritime cultural landscape (Westerdahl, personal
communication).

In its earliest definition, the maritime cultural landscape referred to a relict archaeo-

logical landscape, in search of maritime cultural areas. The first attempt toward a definition
of the maritime cultural landscape was the network of sea routes and harbours, indicated
both above and under water (Westerdahl

1978

:19; Westerdahl, Personal communication).

A later definition is that the maritime cultural landscape would be the whole network of
sailing routes, with ports, havens and harbours along the coast, and its related
constructions and other remains of human activity, underwater as well as terrestrial
(Westerdahl

2008

:212). Westerdahl further points out that cognitive aspects of landscape

are also necessary to an understanding of the Landscape in Man. One could express it this
way: physical landscape ? cognitive landscape = cultural landscape (ibid:213).

For maritime archaeology, the concept of maritime cultural landscapes had a profound

impact. As Marek Jasinski points out; This concept proved very important for the

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development of, at any rate, a significant part of maritime archaeology because it shows
how large a range of data archaeologists can exploit in their studies of human relation to
the sea (

1999:9

). With the concept of maritime cultural landscape, maritime archaeology

moved toward a more holistic understanding of the relation between sea and land—it is not
merely a practice on the seabed. It is according to Jasinski ‘‘a sub discipline of archaeology
(that) covers the entire research field of marine archaeology, other spheres of past
material culture related to the sea and, in addition, the cognitive aspects of human
attachment to the sea (Jasinski

1994

in Jasinski

1999

:10). The maritime cultural landscape

as a concept is very much in use within e.g. Norwegian Cultural Heritage Management
(CHM) under water, as an analytical term to address physical and cognitive aspects
belonging to what can be said is maritime (see also Firth

1995

:5—Management

environment).

Maritimity, Actor Network Theory and Quasi Objects

Few people would deny the existence of maritime, and my intentions are by no means to
prove otherwise. But I do want to ask—what is maritime and its landscape as a phe-
nomenon? This question is a lot more than defining what belongs to the category maritime
and how to identify maritime cultural landscapes, it is about the very nature of the category
and the effects it has upon us. What kind of a landscape is a maritime cultural landscape? Is
it something to be found out there, consisting of more or less pure maritime objects?

The theoretical discussion within maritime archaeology has to a large extent been

concentrated on self definitions; if we are maritime, marine, aquatic, sub aquatic archae-
ologists or simply just archaeologists, which borders we defend and have to overcome.
What is the nature of our discipline and objects (e.g. Adams

2002

; Bass

1966

; Carpenter

1991

; Firth

1995

; Flatman

2003

; Gundersen

2000

,

2007

; Løseth

2006

; Muckelroy

1978

;

McGrail

1984

; Nymoen

1997

; Westerdahl

1989

,

1992

,

1995

,

2007

,

2008

; Jasinski

1993

,

1995a

,

b

,

1999

; Kvalø

2000

). An extensive amount of adjectives have been presented

through research history for describing the activity on the sea floor, and some have based
large parts of their academic career on shaping and intensify those definitions.

In many senses, I am adding more stones to this ballast heap with my article by

discussing and shaping a fairly uncommon noun in use at least within Scandinavian
archaeology: maritimity. Albeit I do hope that it will help as an analytical tool to under-
stand maritime as a phenomenon, and therefore has a justification. My intention with
maritimity as a concept is to explore some differences to be found between Norwegian
CHM under and above water. The concept also might be useful outside Norwegian CHM,
to better understand and discuss the relation between maritime and terrestrial, or land and
sea as we see it in archaeological research and CHM.

Maritimity as I define and use it is the result of identification and sorting between

terrestrial and maritime affairs. The question what is maritime as Westerdahl asked is a
quite complex one, and maritimity as I use it doesn’t contribute in any sense to help further
with a more precise definition. But it does discuss the relationship between sea and land, a
central issue when it comes to maritime archaeology and maritime cultural landscapes.
Though, it is the sorting process between Land and Sea which is kept in focus, not whether
a phenomenon is to be labelled maritime or terrestrial. Maritimity is then to be understood
as a category of understanding, not something with empirical qualities. Here I define
maritimity as the process of purification that takes place in the network, in between the
poles of Land and Sea. In this sense, maritimity is equivalent to the modern metaphysic as

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described by Bruno Latour (

1993

), with the same actants and process at work. The puri-

fication consists of several processes, which gives maritimity many facets. Some of them
I want to explore in this article. Latours understanding of the modern metaphysics is more
thoroughly explained below.

One of the portative arguments within the concept of maritime cultural landscapes is to

bridge boundaries between Land and Sea, as the research history points out as a gap to
overcome. The human perspective, after all, always consists of both land and sea.
(Westerdahl

2008

:191). My assertion is nevertheless that those who have the strongest

critical focus on the division between land and sea (or maritime and terrestrial) also seems
to be at risk of maintaining the gap most efficiently. How I can come to such a conclusion
is to be found within a specific theoretical point of departure.

Bruno Latour claims in ‘‘Science in Action’’ (

1987

) that in the study of science and

technology when following the constitution of knowledge, one should enter through the
back door of Science in the Making, not through the more grandiose entrance of Ready
Made Science (ibid:4). Those two aspects of science are as different as a two-faced Janus,
where the presented statements from ready Made Science are to be regarded as black
boxes—devises of which one needs to know nothing but its input and output. At this stage,
knowledge is cold and stable. An example of a black box could be the scientific method

14

C, introduced by Willard F. Libby in 1946 (Hedeager and Kristiansen

1985

:47; Trigger

1989

:304). Hardly anyone would argue against this method and its relevance, it simply has

become a black box and a valid argument in any dispute. But how did Libby manage to
establish his method as a scientific black box when the knowledge still was warm and
unstable? According to Latour, the unstable phase of Science in the Making is the most
interesting stage in the study of science and its impact on society. The researcher simply
has to be there before the black box gets closed (Latour

1987

cpt.1; Brattli

2006

:40).

Science as a phenomena aims to establish secure knowledge or black boxes as Latour

labels them, where the scientist in the process enrols allies to support the claim, allies of
both human and non human character. These allies can be viewed as participants in a
network, or actants as they may get termed in an Actor Network context. The Network ties
all kind of material together, for example humans, physical structures, objects, text,
machines, time and more. From this heterogeneous soup, phenomena of clear and
unequivocal character arise, phenomena that appear to have been ever present. Actor
Network as a theory is concerned with how networks get established and maintained, how
phenomena get constructed and de-constructed and who in the network gets to speak on
behalf of the rest (Latour

1987

,

1993

, see also Law

2004

:157; Dolwick

2009

:36). In many

senses, the maritime cultural landscape as a concept has established itself as a black box
within maritime archaeology

,

where its success has resulted in a degree of theoretical

stability in both the academic and developer-funded fields.

Closely connected to Actor Network Theory (ANT) is a certain perception of the

modern metaphysics (Latour

1987

,

1993

; Olsen

2003

; Brattli

2006

; Dolwick

2008

,

2009

).

According to Latour‘s understanding of the modern metaphysics, all phenomena shall and
must be categorised as either pure nature or pure society—a process that started with the
mechanical view of the world and has become the very signature of being modern (Latour

1993

, see also Thomas

2004

ch 1; Shapin

1999

). Though, this is an illusion according to

Latour, there exists no such thing as pure natural or societal phenomena. Latour wants us to
appreciate that modern explanations of the world hide and neglect the hybrid relationship
of nature and culture (Guttormsen

2008

:456). Our belief in Nature separated from Society

is simply depending upon our belief in the modern metaphysics. The claim is that Science

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and Research bind together several heterogeneous elements and then define it as a pure
form.

Bjørnar Olsen gives a good description of this in his article Material Culture after

Text:Re-Membering Things, where he refers to the Saamis, who unaware of their onto-
logical blunders kept on hugging and greeting pines after returning from the mountains to
the winter pastures in the forest, and had long conversations with drums and stones, treated
the brown bear as a relative and buried dead bears as humans (Olsen

2003

:95). Unable to

recognise where reality ends and its metaphorical representation begin, it was left to the
anthropologist to draw the dividing line and purify this entangled mess. As Olsen puts it,
although prescribed for the non-human side, material culture ended up occupying neither
of the positions; neither culture nor nature. Being a mixture, a work of translation, material
culture becomes a matter out of place. Or to rephrase it, they become quasi objects.

The binding of heterogeneous elements is according to Latour done in the network,

where actually everything is done. What the network really produces then, as Olsen
demonstrates in his example, are then quasi objects, which get sorted out either to the pole
of Nature or Society by repertoires—a device that means to perform the sorting process.
A repertoire can for instance be juridical acts like the Cultural Heritage Act, machines and
scientific methods (Brattli

2006

:17). The sorting of phenomena to either nature or culture

requires that the repertoire of the natural scientists conclude nature to be something
external. The social scientist’s repertoire leads to the conception of society as an existence
independent of something outside itself, kept in an up—right position solely by interper-
sonal relationships (Latour

1993

; Brattli

2006

).

An important issue for ANT is that all knowledge is of the same kind, it is only the

length and stability of the network that differs. If the natural sciences are different from the
social sciences, it is only because they are built with different kinds of material, like
electrons, fuel cells and fish stocks (Holm

2001

:153). Michel Callon demonstrates in a

study of relationships between economic models and market phenomena, that economic
theory performs, shapes and formats the economy rather than observing and analyzing how
it works (Callon

1998

). One could say that the economic model is not so much a map of the

economy, as the working plan from which the economy has been constructed (Holm

2001

:154). The same can be applied to sociology;

What else does sociologist do? Like everyone else, they never stop working to define

who acts and who speaks. They tape the recollection of a workman, a prostitute or an old
Mexican; they interview; they hand out open and closed questionnaires on every subject
under the sun; they unceasingly sound out the opinions of the masses. Each time they
interpret their surveys they inform the Leviathan, transforming and performing it. Each
time they construct a unity, define a group, attribute an identity, a will or a project; each
time they explain what is happening, the sociologist, sovereign to authors—as Hobbes
used the term—add to the struggling Leviathan’s new identities, definitions and wills
which enable other authors to grow or shrink, hide away or reveal themselves, expand or
contract (Callon and Latour

1981

:298).

And it doesn’t stop with sociology. Maritime archaeology and its maritime landscapes

can be viewed in the same sense, where the model applied to the landscape is not so much
of a map of the archaeology in this landscape, as the working plan from which maritime
archaeology or maritime cultural landscapes has been constructed. In the construction of
maritime archaeology and its landscapes, an additional set of poles seems to be operating, a
sorting where the dichotomy Land and Sea plays a similar role as the Nature—Culture
dichotomy with the same mechanisms at play (Tuddenham

2008

). Phenomena in between

those extreme poles become quasi objects that get sorted to their proper place, a

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purification performed within a network, maintained by different institutions. I have
already suggested this sorting in the introduction as a result of semantics, and named the
sorting process between the poles Sea and Land as a maritimity. If one views the sorting
process between those poles as an activity performed within a network, the process of
identifying and sorting phenomena to the pole of Sea or Land is to be regarded as a
production of quasi objects. It is simply a network constituted by heterogeneous elements,
where phenomenon according to Latour get translated and sorted between the poles of
Nature and Culture, and perhaps also, as I try to argue for, between Land and Sea.

As for the construction of this maritimity, it will consist of a large range of heteroge-

neous elements, from chubby pink little divers to marine survey tools, saline and fresh-
water, wrecks and cannons, land and sea, gender, media, paragraphs, management and so
on. Out of this heterogeneous soup, a maritimity appears; consisting of quasi objects that
have been sorted out and translated in the network and then placed at its proper pole. In
search of anything exclusively maritime, as Westerdahl points out is a challenging exer-
cise, perhaps some of the challenges are not to be found in the phenomena itself, but within
the network that performs the sorting of quasi objects toward the pole of sea.

As a small case study to explore some aspects of maritimity as we can see it in maritime

archaeology and in the study of maritime cultural landscapes, I want to take a closer look at
Norwegian CHM in the managing of different cultural landscapes and their monuments,
and to have a closer look upon an important repertoire in the maintenance of maritimity
within Norwegian CHM. The Cultural Heritage Act defines what is to be regarded as a
monument, and how to protect it. As we shall see, this is a sorting process, where phe-
nomena get sorted and valued differently according to its identification as a monument
belonging to the sea or land. My case study is to be found in a joint venture project between
NTNU Vitenskapsmuseet and Møre & Romsdal County Administration, on an industrial
monument at the Island Smøla. Its history goes back to one of the first recorded financial
bubbles.

Cultural Heritage Management in Different Landscapes

One of the first famous financial bubbles can be found in the establishment of the South
Sea Company in 1711, a London based company that converted outstanding short term war
debts into equity in a new joint-stock company with exclusive trading rights in Spanish
South America (Carswell

1960

). As a trading company, the South Sea never made any

substantial profit, due to the fact that the Spaniards obstructed any agreement between
England and Spain. Nevertheless, the company continued to argue that its longer term
future would be extremely profitable. The company stimulated an interest in investments
that became a nationwide frenzy, where all sorts of people took part as investors. Most of
the investments where put into the South Seas, but other stocks profited from this new
interest as well. Among the many companies to go public in 1720 was an enterprise that
advertised itself as a company for carrying out an undertaking of great advantage, but
nobody to know what it is (sic) (MacKay

1996

:78).

In Norway at the same time, the investor Nils Josten had bought a copper mine at

Smøla, an island situated in between the urban centres of Trondheim and Kristiansund
(Lie and Tuddenham

2009

). Josten‘s idea was to sell the copper mine to English investors.

A Thomas Cable was sent from London to investigate the copper mine, and after the
inspection he gave a very optimistic report to his employer. When Josten learned about the
report, he wasn’t too keen on selling the mine after all. Instead, he wanted to exploit it

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himself—a decision he came to regret later. In 1721 the enterprise had 47 employees in the
mine and smithy’s. But the cash balance was in a poor state. The prosperity of the mine
also turned out to be grossly exaggerated. In 1722, the copper mine adventure was over.
Josten got imprisoned for debt, and he died disillusioned in his cell in 1729 (Lie and
Tuddenham

2009

).

Today, the remains of the copper mine at Smøla constitute an industrial cultural heritage

site of current interest, being the product of a financial bubble. The complex belongs to
different cultural landscapes, where landlubbers and seadogs are about to meet each other
in a joint venture to conduct investigations of the site in the near future both on shore and
in the harbour belonging to the copper mine. The work on land will be conducted by
archaeologists from Møre and Romsdal Country administration, while the underwater work
is to be done by archaeologists from Vitenskapsmuseet, which is one of five museums with
responsibility for sites under water in Norway. The harbour hasn’t been investigated under
water before, but we do have an idea what we will meet on the seafloor. Most likely, there
will be deposits of clay pipes, ceramics, bottles and other typical items found in a harbour.
According to Norwegian legislation, such items are regarded as legally protected as a result
of the formulation of section 14 in the Norwegian Cultural Heritage act on ship finds:

Section 14

The State shall have the right of ownership of boats more than 100 years old, ships’ hulls,
gear, cargo and anything else that has been on board, or parts of such objects, when it
seems clear under the circumstances that there is no longer any reasonable possibility of
finding out whether there is an owner or who the owner is.

This is the most important section in the Cultural Heritage Act when it comes to sites

under water, besides sites older than 1537; the year of the reformation in Norway, which
are automatically protected. This means that the copper mine site on shore is not protected
by the Cultural Heritage Act, since it is far too young to be defined as a pre-reformation
site. Herein lies a paradox. A clay pipe deposited in cultural layers on shore for instance
has no protection. But if the clay pipe is lost from a ship onto the sea floor, it will be
regarded as once belonging to a ship and therefore protected by section 14. This is
regardless of whether there is a wreck nearby or not, it is sufficient that it has been aboard a
ship. True, most items imported to Norway have once been aboard a ship, but it is only
when the item is in a context where it has been lost from a ship onto the seafloor that this
rule applies (Holme

2001

:123). One can argue that the clay pipe has been thrown on shore

from a ship, and therefore it has to be protected by the law. But that claim won’t stand up in
court as this is a fairly unlikely practise. And if the clay pipe is suspected to be thrown from
land onto the sea bed, even if it is obvious that is has been imported by keel, the protection
evaporates immediately (According to Court Ruling Nordmøre Tingrett 2005).

In an Actor Network context, it is common to operate with an Obligatory Passage Point

as a term defining a point in the network where all interests have to pass. The Obligatory
Passage Point contributes to maintain the reality the network wants to communicate. The
Ministry of Environment and the Directorate for Cultural Heritage can be regarded as
Obligatory Passage Points, and have ultimate authority within Norwegian CHM. These
institutions manage the stability of the network, and define and maintain the desired reality
description. In this case, the Obligatory Passage Point within the network defines ship-
wrecks and its belongings as a monument to protect, and it states how to protect them. It
also communicates a difference between terrestrial and maritime cultural heritage, by

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separate limits for protection. To put it in other words, it is a maritimity in action that
maintains a certain perception of reality within CHM.

If one takes the discourse within maritime archaeology regarding ship finds, it becomes

obvious that the reality presented by the cultural heritage act does not correspond with the
view of the relationship between land and sea, where in this case the ship and its
belongings becomes almost independent of terrestrial affairs. Why should the same object
be more interesting if it can be connected to a ship or the fact that is has been lost from a
ship, in contrast to a terrestrial context which transform the same artefact into something of
no archaeological interest?

Another example concerns important elements in the maritime cultural landscape, like

moorings and navigation marks. These objects are highly maritime in their obvious con-
nection to seafaring. They are not protected, however, even though a seamark or mooring
from the seventeenth century may be far more exclusive than a wreck from the nineteenth
century. In this sense, it can be said that present maritime archaeology has not played a
decisive role within the network, to redefine what is to be regarded as a monument. To
come to understand why this dissonance exists between maritime archaeology and CHM,
one has to analyse the Management in the Making, instead of focusing on Ready Made
Management. Shipwrecks and their belongings are given special attention in the legisla-
tion, and the article on ship finds was first articulated in 1963 as an addition to the
legislation of 1951 (Trøim

1999

:99). There are several obvious reasons why this article

appears in the 1960s, but perhaps one important actant that seldom gets mentioned in the
constitution of shipwreck as monuments and how to understand them in the present day
CHM is sport divers and their technology. They have become hidden and silent, but in the
post war period after the introduction of modern day diving equipment when the man-
agement policy was in the making, sport divers where not at all silent actants as Dumas so
pertinently remarks. Later on, they have been translated, and then silenced. During early
CHM under water, a lot of effort was made to interest and enrol sport divers in Norway.
Today, sport divers have been marginalised within Norwegian CHM. The Norwegian
situation is slightly different compared with e.g. the UK, where sports divers have
remained a powerful voice over a longer period (personal communication J. Adams).
Nevertheless they have been and still are important as actants in the network behind that
which constitutes present day CHM. One might ask how the process toward a stabilisation
of a network has influenced the perception of shipwrecks as monuments. The under-
standing of wrecks as monuments will according to ANT be a creation within a network,
where heterogeneous actants play important roles. Perhaps those who have been silenced
are the most interesting actants when it comes to this creation.

As demonstrated, the legislation and the CHM organisation can provide a challenge in

managing cultural landscapes under and above water as an entirety. It can be said that this
example demonstrates a maritimity within Norwegian legislation and CHM, where the
cultural heritage act operates as a repertoire to maintain a desired reality, where ships and
their belongings are to be regarded as of different value compared to sites on shore. The
maritimity within Norwegian CHM sorts and pushes phenomena toward the pole of sea. To
investigate this black box within Norwegian CHM, one has to follow the creation of the
legislation, where heterogeneous actants play a role in the establishment and maintenance
of the network.

Another question that could be asked in this case study is: what kind of cultural landscape

does Smølen kobberverk belong to? It obviously belongs to both a maritime and a terrestrial
landscape. But can they or should they be viewed separately? Which parts of the complex
are to be defined as maritime or terrestrial? And who is to decide? Maritime-related

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archaeological data acquired through terrestrial archaeology by excavations on land are
often studied by land-archaeologists who feel no need to refer to their problems as maritime
or their field of research as maritime archaeology (Jasinski

1999

:3). Jasinski‘s statement

can be interpreted as a stabilisation of a network that aims to draw attention toward the pole
of sea, where the sub-discipline Maritime Archaeology is the best suited to study maritime
matters. Maritime archaeology is something else than terrestrial archaeology, which focuses
on terrestrial matters. Archaeology according to this view simply consists of two poles with
different agendas but with the same empirical base:

That terrestrial and maritime archaeologist view, investigate and document cultural

heritage objects on the coast from different perspectives is something I sometimes notice
when studying photographs and drawings made by archaeologists. The same objects are
often photographed or drawn by terrestrial archaeologists while standing on the shore
with their backs to the sea, using the inland as the background for their documentation.
Maritime archaeologists generally do the opposite. They take up a position with their
backs to the land and use the sea as the background. This almost mechanical and often
unconscious action reflects the way of thinking and the attitude of the researchers.
Co-operation between these two categories of archaeologists would give the discipline a
chance to acquire a more all-embracing understanding of the maritime cultural heritage
(ibid:12).

If so, the cooperation between landlubbers and seadogs at Smølen Kobberverk should

secure an all embracing understanding of both maritime and terrestrial aspects of this
cultural complex and its landscape, where both poles meets and cooperate between
physical and academic borders. Though, as Tim Ingold points out about landscapes;

…it is

important to note that no feature of the landscape is, of itself, a boundary. It can only
become a boundary, or the indicator of a boundary, in relation to the activities of the
people (or animals) for whom it is recognized or experienced as such (Ingold

1993

: 156).

The question is then; who identifies those boundaries and for what reason? Who decides
what is to be identified as a phenomenon belonging to sea or land? Who in this network
speaks on behalf of the rest and what kind of obligatory passage points can be identified?
What kind of repertoires maintain the sorting process and production of quasi objects,
which also can be termed as a maritimity?

Conclusion

Maritime archaeology and its maritime cultural landscapes clearly draw attention to the
need for study of maritime matters. The concept of maritime cultural landscape illustrates
the multitude of elements belonging to seafaring and the maritime way of life. But it also
maintains a division that is created within a network, where the maritime cultural land-
scape becomes something different to other landscapes, as a result of a sorting process. In
an Actor Network context, one can claim that it is as much a producer of quasi objects as a
description of a reality to be found. When Westerdahl points out that the problem is to
define the specifically maritime in relation to what is specifically land—oriented
(

2008

:191), the answer to why this is challenging might be found in the network, as the

result of a translation of quasi objects, or a maritimity as argued for in this paper. Poles like
Sea and Land, or Maritime and Terrestrial, can according to ANT be viewed as creations
within a network, as with the Nature—Culture dichotomy. In this article, I have discussed
maritimity as an example of purification within the dichotomy Land—Sea, as equivalents
to the modern metaphysics as described by Latour. In CHM and research this maritimity

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can represent a challenge, where the danger is as Westerdahl points out for those who have
an interest in matters maritime (or pure terrestrial for that matter), becomes excessively
narrow, even though the intention was exactly the opposite.

Acknowledgments

I am most grateful to Terje Brattli, Jesse Ransley, Pa˚l Nymoen, Jostein Gundersen,

Stephen Wickler, Jon Anders Risvaag and Øyvind Ødega˚rd for reading and commenting on the text.

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